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Wednesday, 19 December 2012

Texting

This week I
was teaching English to my sixth formers and asked them a very simple (and I
had better add relevant) question that resulted in a surprising answer. I
assumed that teenagers would be au fait with the latest trends in text speak. I
stood ready with my board pen in hand to write down all of the wonderful
acronyms and homophonic representations that they used daily. My lesson did not
go quite as I had hoped when they patiently explained that they thought text
speak was rather silly, was mostly used by their parents trying to be cool, and that they like to write in full, grammatically
correct sentences. It would seem, at least amongst the teenagers I teach, that
sending nonsensical texts littered with abbreviations is a thing of the past.
The younger generation have been less affected by trends in Internet language than
we might expect. All of which made me a bit embarrassed of my own punctuationless
and carelessly written messages i mite well b goin thru erli midlif crysis lol
asdfghjkl wld h8 dat xox